The next day, a spokesman for Mr. Putin said information on the accident “belongs to the category of top-secret data.”In the following days, Mr. Putin posthumously conferred the nation’s highest honor, Hero of the Russian Federation, to four of the crew members and lesser awards to the other 10. Russian submarine hit by deadly fire is nuclear-powered, Putin confirms. In 2014, the Northern Fleet put the Arctic brigades under its command; soldiers equipped with the latest gear for cold climate warfare. James G. Foggo III, commander of the United States Sixth Fleet, whose area of operations includes Europe, declined to be interviewed for this article. But Russian media reported it was the country's most secret submersible, a Some Russian media said the vessel was an AS-12 nuclear-powered sub, however, there has been no official confirmation, President Vladimir Putin, who came under criticism for his handling of the Kursk nuclear submarine disaster in 2000 that killed 118 sailors, canceled a scheduled appearance and immediately summoned Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu for a briefing on the blaze, which was under investigation. “It can go slowly to the bottom and it won’t crack,” he said.Mr. Independent Russian media outlets have widely reported that Losharik, also known by the hull number AS-12 and more recently AS-31, was the submarine that experienced the … Fishermen in Ura Bay reported that they saw a submarine surface rapidly at around 9:30 p.m. and meet a navy ship and two tugs. Reuters The small vehicles have a crew of two and are primarily intended for rescuing submariners in case of incidents. The crew quarters would be small and could quickly fill with smoke, he said.“This wouldn’t be like going into a burning house, ” Mr. Lobner said.The Russians are not the only ones who don’t want to talk about the Losharik.Adm. Regular submarines can typically dive to depths of up to 2,000 feet.Some observers speculated the Losharik was even capable of going as deep as 19,685 feet, but the claims couldn't be independently confirmed. Get the latest breaking news delivered straight to your inbox.Copyright © 2020 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. “So you might not have to do too much.”Not just any submarine can do that — at least, not across nearly the entire expanse of the sea bottom.But the Losharik is not just any submarine. Sander Badar, a young conscript in the Norwegian Army, guarded his words carefully as he trained a pair of huge binoculars on the waters off Russia’s northern coast from his observation post on a ridge nearly a thousand feet above the Barents Sea. "The Losharik, which entered service in 2010, is the most advanced and most obscure Russian submarine. The Losharik may have been docked with its mothership at the time, Kommersant said.After a partial evacuation, 10 crew members stayed to fight the fire along with four reinforcements from the mothership, the situation became more and more dire as oxygen was depleted from two emergency breathing systems aboard the sub, Kommersant reported. A fire on any submarine may be a mariner’s worst nightmare, but a fire on the Losharik was a threat of another order altogether. Getty “It does feel like we’re updating ‘There is also an eye toward economic benefit, Ms. Conley said: Russia has made no secret of its desire to control a northern shipping lane through the Arctic as ice recedes because of climate change and to expand its oil and gas production.Over the last five years, 14 airfields have been opened or rebuilt along the Northern Sea Route; three fully autonomous bases have opened on Arctic archipelagoes. According to a Russian Defense Ministry statement, all men died from inhalation of smoke and toxic fumes. Its name, it appears, was taken from an old Russian cartoon character, a horse assembled from small spheres.The spheres are cramped, and they are joined by even smaller passageways.A common procedure when there is a fire on a sub is to close the hatches to slow its spread. The cables are largely unprotected and easy to find. Losharik The crew began succumbing to smoke inhalation, and there may have been an explosion in the battery compartment, the newspaper said.Mr. The fire on the Losharik likely started in one or multiple battery compartments, for reasons that are not entirely clear. But when asked about Russian submarines, Private Badar declined to reveal what he may have seen.When TASS, the Russian news agency, first reported the Losharik fire, it said 14 sailors had been killed aboard a “deep-sea station,” without mentioning its nuclear reactor. The fatal fire started on a AS-12 Losharik mini-sub (Image: Komsomolskaya Pravda / east2west news) Read More Related Articles. When a fire broke out aboard a deep-diving nuclear spy submarine last month, it killed 14 Russian sailors. Mr. Boulègue believes accidents have been far more common than publicly known.“I assume that every other sub in the Russian fleet has similar problems,” Mr. Pike said. OFF THE COAST OF NORWAY — There could hardly have been a more terrifying place to fight a fire than in the belly of the Losharik, a mysterious deep-diving Russian submarine.Something, it appears, had gone terribly wrong in the battery compartment as the sub made its way through Russian waters 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle on the First of July.A fire on any submarine may be a mariner’s worst nightmare, but a fire on the Losharik was a threat of another order altogether.